(From left) ABFA President Everton “Batow” Gonsalves, ABFA General Secretary and CFU President Gordon “Banks” Derrick and TD in charge of Player Development and Scouting within the MLS Alfonso Mondelo at a press conference at City View Hotel in St John’s. (Photo by Thaddeus Price)
ST JOHN’S, Antigua- Antigua & Barbuda Football Association (ABFA) may not move to employ a new technical director before the first quarter of 2014.
This was revealed by President Everton “Batow” Gonsalves, who said that following a proper assessment of the international roster for the remainder of the year, they did not see a pressing need to bring in professional help at this juncture.
“We looked at it carefully and we don’t have anything that is really so important coming in before the end of the year, bearing in mind that we would have been re-elected in the middle of the year,” he said.
“So we want to concentrate on our local initiative going in until year end and certainly within the first quarter of next year as we look at the international calendar when it comes out and put something in place. But we are discussing and we are doing the groundwork so that when the technical director is appointed that he will hit the ground running.”
Gonsalves, a former national player, added that in order to ensure the right person is selected for the job, the FA would value the added time to better peruse the candidates.
“Most of the interviews we have had are with top of the line people and they have indicated to us that, ‘the minimum you are asking me to come for I would like to because I love Antigua. I see that you have a lot of potential. I would love to live there, but that is not the kind of money I am looking for at this point in time’,” he said.
“We are narrowing down our choices to about three or four who, with the intervention of some other partners and sponsors, might be able to get involved and take care of the compensation for a good technical director,” the president said.
The football boss said also that the FA is on a drive to ensure its national coaches are well equipped to handle the task at hand as the objective is to one day employ a local coach as technical director.
“We are looking at a number of licensing initiatives which is a requirement by FIFA that they have a particular level of licensing before they are contemplated and as such a number of our coaches have already been earmarked to attend those sessions to get them up to par,” Gonsalves said.
“’Debu’ (Rolston Williams) was very lucky over the last couple of days as he travelled to the Cayman Islands with us to the summit for presidents, general secretaries and technical directors and he would have had a wonderful time in learning what the requirements of a technical director would involve and as such, he has been able to share his information with a number of other persons on the local scene as to what the requirements are. Certainly, the next time around in February 2014, we will have another such exercise where we will have a number of other locals involved in that.”
The FA had indicated in August they were in search of a new technical director who would replace the country’s last TD, Tom Curtis, who resigned in October of 2012 following Antigua & Barbuda’s failed World Cup Qualifying bid.